Cougars look to bounce back from tough road trip; spring football schedule released

The Cougars are looking to rebound from a rough road trip (Bob Levey/for the Chronicle)

Ralph Waldo Emerson once said “A man is what he thinks about all day long.”

In trying to make a point in what was a long Monday practice on the heels of two road losses, Houston coach James Dickey relayed that message in an effort to get some better execution from his team as it went through a variety of drills.

Dickey even made sure to inform the Cougars where the quote came from, which prompted at least one entertaining question from freshman guard Jherrod Stiggers, who briefly confused Emerson with the designer best known for polo shirts, Ralph Lauren.

But the point is, Dickey was making sure to get their attention and put the focus on the mental game, something the Cougars have struggled with on the road.

“I want to see if they’re listening, if they’re retaining what I’m saying” Dickey said. “Because I know when I say something like that, they’ll go ‘What’d he say? What is he talking about?’ I want them to listen about what we’re doing and what we’re supposed to do.”

At this time last week, the Houston Cougars were feeling good.

They had put together two straight wins to end a four-game losing streak and things seemed to be moving in the right direction after home victories over East Carolina and UTEP.

A week later, after Monday’s lengthy workout, things have changed. Two consecutive losses have returned the stench that existed during the losing streak and now the Cougars are searching to reverse course again when they host the crosstown rival Rice Owls on Wednesday at Hofheinz Pavilion.

Houston (11-11, 3-6 Conference USA) dropped two straight on the road at UAB (80-69) and at Tulane (75-54) last week.

The Cougars struggled defensively against UAB, a team that was averaging 58.6 points per game on the season coming into the teams’ meeting and nearly scored that many in the first half alone (50). Against Tulane, Houston started poorly as the Green Wave began on a 19-5 run and never trailed. At one point, the Green Wave led by 28.

Clearly, it wasn’t the type of road trip that the Cougars envisioned.

“You have to be tough when you play on the road,” junior forward Kirk Van Slyke said. “You have to have that toughness. People are playing hard, but we just have to play hard together and have that togetherness on the road, because it’s us against everybody else.”

That hasn’t happened. In C-USA play, the Cougars have been solid at home (3-1) but have struggled mightily on the road, going 0-5 with all five losses coming via double digits.

Dickey said a lot of the struggles are mental. The Cougars often have good practices and preparation on the road but the execution doesn’t translate to game time. That has led to mistakes that have led to the Cougars falling behind by large deficits and digging holes that they can’t climb out of.

“You’ve got to understand the time, situation, momentum, the score…do we need to have a longer possession?” Dickey said. “We’ve got to put them on defense, we’ve got to get a basket or get to the free-throw line, we can’t take a quick shot if we’re not running a fever.”

Redshirt freshman guard Joseph Young said the road is a challenge because they don’t get the emotional boost they’re accustomed to at Hofheinz.

“When we’re at home, our fans keep us in the game and help us overcome adversity,” Young said. “We come out and play as hard as we can (on the road) but if we don’t come out and play (well) from the beginning of the game and we fall behind by 16 or 20 points, it’s hard to get back in the game.”

It’s something the Cougars will have to fix if they hope to make any noise in the conference moving forward.

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For those of you craving football, you have your next dosage of action to look forward to, as UH released its spring football practice schedule on Monday evening.

The Cougars begin spring ball on March 21 and ends on April 13 with the Red-White spring game. And coach Tony Levine will open all spring practices to the public, which is a change from last year (only a few spring practices were open to the public a year ago).

The spring game will be on a Friday night instead of a Saturday afternoon. It will be played at 7 p.m. on April 13 at Robertson Stadium.